Zimbabwe's black rhino population is now the second largest in Africa. The country is also conspicuous as the only one in which rhino numbers have actually increased over recent years - a happy situation that may not last very much longer in the light of recent developments.
Fight of poachers - Zimbabwe Hits Back. Two poachers have been shot and killed in the Zambezi Valley so far this year. Another two have been wounded and six arrested during a series of contacts - some involving exchanges of fire - during the period from January to June. National Parks patrols, aided by the police, have impounded five hunting rifles, all Winchester and Brno.375's and have also confiscated fourteen rhino horns in addition to those recovered by SRT in Zambia. Several men have already appeared in court. Three have so far been convicted of offences including illegal hunting and the carrying of unlicensed weapons. One has been ordered to pay $5000 in compensation - the current ?book value' of a rhinoceros - to the Zimbabwe government. Their defences often included an avowed ignorance of the location of the Zimbabwe-Zambian border, and of the aim of the incursions. Others insisted that they ?had only come across for the day' to act as porters. Such explanations got short shrift because the kilometre-wide Zambezi forms the international border at this point - and because the parties carried sacks of bread, maize meal, cooking pots, torches and skinning knives as well as the Brnos and Winchesters used to kill the rhinos. Thus far, sentences have averaged two years per man criticised as ?derisory' in some quarters. However, Parks officials have expressed reasonable satisfaction: those so far convicted are relatively minor offenders. Three others, accused of killing three rhinos each, have been remanded for what are likely to be much heavier sentences.
The majority of this population is concentrated in a relatively small area: the Middle Zambezi Valley, a protected wildlife complex consisting of one national park and several safari areas that lies downstream of the Kariba dam and extends east almost to the Mocambique border. Until this year it had escaped the kind of commercial rhino-horn poaching that has plagued the Luangwa Valley, a few hundred kilometres to the north, and that has virtually annihilated the species elsewhere on the continent.
The kind of commercial rhino-horn poaching that has plagued the Luangwa Valley, a few hundred kilometres to the north, and that has virtually annihilated the species elsewhere on the continent.
